March was a busy month of birthdays, birthdays, travel and oh so much more!!! Instead of a long drawn out wordy blog I figured I'd save myself some time and finger cramps by just doing a photo blog of the month...might be a new trend, let's see.
Mar 1:
Saw a post with this picture and I had to capture it...it totally captures my thoughts about my BFF's...Baofang, Gina, Alicia, Mel & my closest and most important 2 my sister & husband!!!!!
Mar 2:
Shaun started trying to walk last month but today he really went for it!!! We got a good video of it too. This little guy is growing up so quickly! Just happy he started walking before he turned 1...his big brother set some high standard for him to follow behind.
Mar 3:
One of the first beautiful spring days this year so after play group we headed to the park with our friends Alex & kids. Lino was having such a good time with Augusta. They were walking thru massive puddles and even tho Lino was no dressed for it ad I kept yelling no!!! they did it anyway. After about 5 min of trying to stop him I just gave up and let him just enjoy his self. He really did and I was happy or him.
This is his first time climbing a real tree & by his self!! I was just a little nervous but it didn't stop him.
After summating Mt Irish Blown Over Tree, Lino & Augusta celebrated their accomplishment. Too cute!
Group pic!
The aftermath of Lino's mud trucking adventure. He was so proud of his mudding it and I was just mortified...how am I going to get this dirty filty kid into the car without contaminating everything!! Yikes...oh well just strip him from the bottom down & go straight home & into the bath!!!!
Even tho Lino & Shaun spent most of the morning outside the weather was so nice that we had to go out to the park to continue enjoying the great weather. And this was Lino being a big brother at his best...teaching Shaun to climb up the slide the opposite direction. The crazy part was that Shaun was actually doing it without much problem!!!! He loved every minute of it.
Mar 6:
Finally ordered Shaun's bday cake for the KC party. It's a giraffe theme because he would always take a pic with his giraffe toy. It took me forever to find a pic that I liked but I finally found one...simple but cute & it's a giraffe #1 which I was excited about.
Mar 7:
Went out for a girls night with Michelle & Nicole to the Cornstore & we had a great time! First night out without Mike & with the girls...many more to come I hope!
Mar 8:
Went for out normal Sat walk and when we looked into the stroller Lino & Shaun were holding hands...talk about a heart warming moment. We love these kiddos & they love each other so much. How blessed are we?!?!?!
Mar 10:
Another nice day & no one to play with so we went to Fota & had a blast!!!! Lino found a super friendly kangaroo that had a baby in tow but didn't mind being cuddled by him.
That night I had a committee meeting to go to so Mike was in charge of putting the kids to bed and the next morning I find this...looks like Mike had a rough time getting Shaun Shaun to sleep...oops.
Mar 12:
Shaun got this blister like thing on his eye on Sun the 9th but I didn't think much of it because it was small. Monday it was a little bigger & by Tue afternoon it seem to be getting bigger. Tue night after bath I noticed 4 more blisters now on his back, neck & belly. I was getting worried at that point and the next morning, the 12th he had another 4 blisters on his belly & back do I told Mike I was taking him to the GP because I was worried mainly about the eye blister but had a sneaky suspicion that he had chicken pox. Mike didn't think he did & I didn't want to think he did either because he is so young & still breast feeding so it's less likely that he would get it but I couldn't understand what all he blisters were from. We were able to get into the Dr office that morning & Dr thought it was infact chicken pox. We even found a couple more blisters in his head so I knew it wasn't good. I felt bad for poor Shaun & felt bad because we had been out & about the last two days...playgroup & Fota on Mon, coffee morning Tue & play date with Donnavan Tue afternoon...oh the number of kids I exposed to this. So I sent a message on Facebook to the groups to warn them & hope no one was angry. And the rest of the day Shaun sat in my lap & cuddled. He was acting a little off the last couple of days anyway so I knew something was up so finally I got confirmation. I was worried about him & also about us being able to make out flight in a week back to the states!!! If he's still contagious we technically aren't suppose to get on the flight and if people see the blisters, even though most of them were on his belly back, I'm sure they would say something to the airline. So needless to say I was a little worried about the fate of our trip... What good timing?
Close up picture of the blister on Shaun's eye.
Mar 14:
So Shaun has the chickenpox and Lino has his first swim lesson today… What am I to do? I said a prayer the Shaun would actually sleep for a little while in the car at least on the way there so that I would have enough time to get Lino in and changed and set up for his class then I would sit outside with Shaun while Lino was in class. God and Shaun must have been listening because shine and it up sleeping the whole time we were at the pool. I was able to get Lino in the water and I went back to check on Shaun and he was still asleep so I just spent the 30 minutes Lino was swimming going back-and-forth watching Lino and checking on Shaun. I'm sure the people there thought I was crazy because I kept walking around but it worked and I'm happy about that. Lino had a good time and even though at first he wouldn't put his head under the water after about 10 minutes watching and the kids doing he was putting his head under the water like he has been doing it for months… I was so proud of that little kid.
Mar 15:
Since I have a slightly contagious little baby and Leno wanted to do something we decided to go have lunch with daddy after Lino got out of school. That was pretty fun actually. Even though we had to eat in the car in the parking lot because we aren't allowed in the building it was nice for the boys to see daddy and for him to get a few minutes to play with them in the middle of the day. Next we decided to check out a little tower near Fota. We ended up spending a couple of hours out there and both Lino and Shaun seem to enjoy it quite a bit. The funniest part of the whole outing was that we took a really quick walk along the river and Lnio was knocking over rocks and under one of the rocks was these jumping bugs that freak the hell out of me… After that I was done playing knock over the rock but Lino thought that it was the best game in the world. Yuck!!!
The boys look so tiny up against this tower and mind you it wasn't that big.
Playing in the rocks...
Mar 15:
Another beautiful day in Cork!! The boys got outside for a little while to play a little soccer… Looks like we have a new little future soccer player in the works. Shaun loves playing with balls...he is all boy!
After soccer I left Shaun at home with Mike & I met Michelle at the playground so that Lino and Freya could have a little playtime. Then we headed over to Carrigtohill to go to feed the ducky's & Lino of course tested his limits and almost went into the pond but he had a blast. We had never been over there so it was a nice change.
Mar 16:
Lino had a birthday party to go to on Sunday and even though it seemed like most of Shaun's blisters had scabs on them I didn't want to risk it so Mike ended up taking him and I stayed home with Shaun. This is a pic of Lino and the kids at the party on one of the tractor rides.
Lino photo bombing Shaun sleeping at breakfast today!
Mar 17:
HAPPY ST PATRICKS DAY!!!!
I believe that my son is finally not contagious anymore so we are able to enjoy St. Patrick's Day in Cork… Yippee!!!! And we should be safe to travel on Tue to the States...thank the good lord!
We started the day off with pancakes per Lino's requests. I have this bright idea in my hand that I would make green pancakes but after thinking about it for two seconds I decided maybe I would just do pancakes with something green on them. Then I thought I would do shamrock shaped pancakes which was not very easy considering I had no utensils to make the shapes but all in all I was able to get a couple of good shamrock shaped pancakes with green shimmer on them...not to bad for free hand pancake sculpting.
We took the train down to the city, we wanted to get there a little early before the parade and we thought we have plenty of time which we actually did. Of course we had to get a few items in order to fully embrace the festivities. We were shocked because there weren't that many people in the city but after the parade started the crowd turned out to be a nice size. The boys seem to enjoy themselves, well Lino did, Shaun slept most of it but when he was woke he enjoyed watching all the floats go by.
Shaun's 1st St Patty's Day!!
All smiles with Lino & mommy!
Some of the interesting & very manual floats. Most of the floats were people powered...ie people walking inside of them to pull them along the road. Crazy but I guess it's efficient!
Scottish band at an Irish event???
Huge whale that I had to get a pic of...super weird & cool all at the same time.
Shauny enjoying the parade & mommy enjoying the Mei Tie carrier!!
Some guy that people came flying out of every crack to take a picture of so I had to take a snap of him too. After a post on FB to find out if anyone knew who he was Mike & I felt a little silly because apparently he's some super famous dancing guy that's well known in the US & has a house/home/residence of some sort in County Cork...a big deal apparently. Anyway, Mike & I had & still have no idea who Michael Flanigan is but I guess that's who this guy is...cool...I guess?? Hahaha
My 3 very special boys/men on the train ride home...love them to pieces.
Mar 18:
The boys & I headed over to the states. The flights were ok & I was worried about the transfer in London but it wasn't too bad. Our transfer bus did break down which meant we got to our gate just in time for boarding. We had to stop at the ticket gate for some reason & that seemed to take forever but at least the ladies were nice & distracted Lino so that I could deal with them. Then once we made it to NY I realized I had told Nini & PopPop the wrong gate...we were on a British Airlines flight but an AA plane so two different terminals...thankfully fairly close so it worked out. We spend 2 nights there and the boys loved every moment...I loved the extra help!!! On the 19th Nini surprised me with an early bday cheesecake from my favorite place. Oh so yummy!!! I had to have one of these cheesecakes with a crumble on it for Christmas in 2012 when I was preggo with Shaun...talk about heaven! Love my family & apparently they love me <3.
Mar 20:
Happy Birthday to me!!!! I feel so young (wink wink). For my birthday I decided to treat myself to a 3hr flight alone with the boys to KC...ugh. The boys were happy to be getting on a plane & while we were waiting on the plane to deboard they were just mezmorized with the sight of all the planes, trucks & activities on the ground...I thought this was such a sweet moment I had to take a pic.
Make it to KC and my sister surprised me because she was repainting her house. It was a mess or a work in progress but it was looking good...very exciting. Since she was busy trying to get the house in order for the party we decided to wait to have birthday dinner until Friday...no problem for me...just direct me to the bed please!
Mar 21:
I have to get Shaun's scrapbook done before the party because I had Lino's done before his party. I did get to work on the first 5mo when I was in KC in Oct but didn't really finish it so I have a lot of work ahead of me. I was so overwhelmed I didn't even know where to begin. I had to call on my scrapping buddy Gina to get me motivated ad finally I dug in. Thankfully TT has a big basement so I had plenty of space to spread out all my crap and get going. The first day was long but productive. Here was one of my pages, I took a pic because I wasn't sure I was going to be able to bring the scrapbook to NY because I had a lot of other crap I knew I would be bringing back so I wanted the NY grands to see some of the work. It looks better in person but you get the idea. I had to run to Michael's for more supplies because all my stuff was old and dried out so I ended up spending way too much on glue, stickers and paper decorations.
After scrapping for a while I decided to go to the store to get the stuff for the party...party city is a rip off but they have cute stuff. Even though they didn't have my 1st bday theme exactly I was able to piece together some stuff to make it work. I'm glad I got that done & out of the way!
Mar 22:
More scrapping & thankfully my mom took off a few days so that she could watch the boxy for me. I made good progress so should be done by Tue of I'm lucky!!! For dinner we went to the Cheesecake Factory because I hadn't been there in a while plus TT wanted cheesecake so Grandpa & Grandma came to join us and Grandpa & Shaun had a ton of fun together.
My bday cake!!! Finally :-)
It's funny because my in-laws got me cake early to make sure I had something special for my bday but my own family waited 2 days and still only got me a slice of cake...isn't that a little crazy??? Hahaha. I love them all.
After dinner Lino had a meltdown because he couldn't go with GP & GM...so looks like there is a sleep over in his near future...YES!!!!!!!
Mar 23:
TT babysitting her nephew...thankfully I don't pay her much at all.
Nana was doing the exact same thing with Shaun but when I walked into the room Shaun's head popped up so I couldn't get the picture. I tell u...it's hard to find good quality care these days.
That afternoon while both Lino & Shaun were at GP's house TT & I decided to go down memory lane and try on some old dresses that TT had stored in the basement. These dresses are from 1994-1998 and it's pretty easy to tell. So we tried them on and only one out of the 5 we tried actually still fit...very sad. But it was some of the most fun that me & my sister have had in a long time. Lots of laughs and reminiscing on the old days and when we wore the dresses and how out mom could let a 16yr old go out in something like this. It's just crazy because our mom would have been there picking out the most tight, short & flashy dress she could find...crazy.
This was one of TT's dresses, I never wore it...probably because my big tata's would be to tempted to pop out!!!
My 2nd or 3rd winter formal dress so I wore this when I was about 16. I never thought I was thin but I guess I was..,or I'm just fat now...very sad because I actually like this dress.
And more than that I must have gained about 2 extra ribs because I couldn't zip this damn dress pass my first rib.
Very depressing so we opened a bottle of cheap wine to make it all better.
This one still fits at least and I still got it!!!! Kind of...hahaha
TT looks damn good here too. We both got it!!!
Mar 24:
Shaun loves to vacuum so he decided to help TT out while she was doing a little cleaning. How cute...is that a Cowboy's t-shirt???? Yes, thanks to the Brit-ton family in VA.
He gets the idea that you push & pull. But he can't exactly pull the vacuum back so he goes for the push & push method instead. Whatever works little man...whatever works for you.
Mar 25:
A little shopping for stuff to bring back to Ireland. I can't believe I just spent $130 on crap & still have a crap ton of stuff left to get...but thank goodness for Walmart!!!
Mar 26:
Happy 1st Birthday Shaun!!!!
I tried to tame the beast that is his hair...it was tame for about 30min which is about how long it took to get these pics. He was just moving like crazy and wouldn't sit one moment...busy busy little man.
Love that face...even though he looks like he's up to something not good I can't help but want to eat him up!
Quality time with my first & most high maintenance niece ever. Love me some Morgan.
Mar 27:
Finally officially finished with my book! The last few touches took a couple of days because I wasn't focused but the main point is that it's done before the party so I'm happy about that...now I can relax a little.
Mar 28:
Mike made it in to KC but his flight was delayed so we ended up having to rush around to get things done before people got into town but it was nice to see him. I even made a special stop to Starbucks I get him a coffee so it would be ready for him when he got into the car. He was happy to see us & was missing Lino since he was still at the grands house but only a little :-). We only had a min to go to Chick-fil-a for a bite to eat before going to Shaun's 12mo checkup. We both enjoyed out spicy chicken sandwiches...nothing like them in the world! Shaun's appt went good, he weights 20lbs and is 28in long...growing so big! He has a wart or callus on his pinky finger that's been there for months but the dr didn't seem to be worried about it so we will try the duck tape method of removal...at some point.
While at the dr appt my BFF from Texas arrived. She drove up all by herself and brought our most favorite cake with her for the party. We were able to go out for drinks and chips & queso and catch up which was really nice. It has been almost 9mo since I last saw her (in person) so it was nice.
My uncle, aunt, cousin & 2nd cousin drove in from Indiana for the party and they got to town while we were at dinner. Mike came to join us for dinner because we both missed Mexican food being in Ireland so going to On the Border was a special treat. When we got home I got a surprise because my grandma was with my uncle & co. I wasn't expecting her to come but it was so nice to see her...such a blessing. She has a lot going on right now but I was glad she could make it for the party. We had talked a couple times and she said she wasn't going to make it because of her health so it was such a blessing to have her there!
Mar 29:
Party time! Lots to do before party...decorate, get the balloons, finis decorating, make gift bags, cook, eat and enjoy! In true Britton form the party was late so the bday boy was getting tired and cranky so Aunti Gina took him on a spin to get a little cuddle time & to put him to sleep. He was out like a light and she was in heaven!
I forgot to take pics with my phone so these are a few pics from the camera of the party & stuff. The cake turned out great!!
Some of the decorations
Bday boy testing out his cake. Even tho Nana have him a small cake on Thursday so he already knows what to do wth this cake. Oh yeah speaking of, Nana gave Shaun this cupcake covered in icing at 8pm and of course he was bouncing off of the walls until past midnight. And she had the nerves to leave us with him. I couldn't believe it...sugar him up & dump him off with his Aunt & mother...I guess it's part of the payback as a parent. Let me tell u it was cruel.
At some point Shaun tossed the crown and got down & dirty in that cake...he loved every moment of it.
The aftermath of the cake...he did a good job with it I would say.
We had a great day with lots of food and even a nerf gun fight which was a major hit with the kids, thanks Pierre. After the kids party you know it was time for the adults to enjoy so drinks for everyone. I love getting together with family & friends...wish we could do this more often.
Mar 30:
We had breakfast but decided to go out to Mikes favorite brunch place for lunch...because we are cows! It was great & had a good day with the family. Gina left & Uncle Tommy got sick & stayed home all day. That afternoon the icecream truck came thru the neighborhood and all the big kids ran outside like they had never seen an icecream truck before. We must have spent a fortune on these little ice cream treats but they were delicious & brought back so many memories...it was worth it.
Here's TT directing traffic at the truck...always trying to direct traffic that girl.
Group pic!
Uncle Tommy went into the hospital last night and seems like he migt have some artery blockage causing his pain...keeping him overnight for observation.
Mar 31:
Today we leave for NY. I went to see Uncle Tommy before leaving and he had a bad night but was feeling better by the time I got there. They were planning to do some scope procedure to see what was going on but I couldn't stay to support because we had to get back. Thankfully everything was ok and he only needed to stay and extra 2 days but it made things crazy for the rest of the family who needed to get back to work. Luckily it all worked out. But what didn't work out was packing all of out crap and trying to get everything to fit into 2 suit cases...we got almost everything but I was going to have to carry on the gift bag with all the stuff Shaun got at the party but the bag ended up ripping and mike wasn't in the mood to deal with it so we left it there. Hopefully Nana will be able I bring it with her when she comes I'm May!
